Bill To Repair 2nd-injury Fund Takes Added Step

March 08, 1996|By ANDREW JULIEN; Courant Staff Writer

The General Assembly's labor committee voted Thursday to back a measure restoring benefits to injured workers who have seen drastic cuts during the past few months, but added yet another wrinkle to an increasingly complex situation.

The bill, if it passes the General Assembly in its current form, could prove a windfall for some injured workers and cost the state's second-injury fund -- which is financed by employers -- between $10 million and $15 million.

Because of confusion over calculating cost-of-living adjustments, some workers or their survivors have had their benefits cut by as much as 40 percent during the past few months. There is broad agreement to restore those reductions.

But the bill that won the committee's support Thursday goes beyond fixing that problem alone. After investigating the cuts, some lawmakers concluded that state workers' compensation officials have been using the wrong formula to determine cost-of-living adjustments for as long as five years.

In 1991, the legislature changed the method of awarding the adjustments from flat dollar amounts to a formula based on the percentage change in wages. State Rep. James A. O'Rourke III, D-Cromwell, the committee's co-chairman, said the problem is that the new formula was improperly applied to workers hurt before 1991.

``This is about what legal rights people injured in the workplace have at the time of their injury,'' said O'Rourke.

Republicans on the committee argued that O'Rourke's proposal went too far. State Rep. Curtis D. Andrews Jr., R-Hamden, proposed an amendment that would have ended the drastic cuts workers have seen during the past few months, but not change the system that has been used for much of the past five years.

``What you're doing,'' Andrews said, ``is going back five years and forcing insurance companies and the second-injury fund to recalculate [cost-of-living adjustments] retroactively to 1991.''

His proposal was defeated along party lines.

O'Rourke said he would try to get the bill before the House of Representatives as soon as possible.

Jesse M. Frankl, chairman of the state's Workers' Compensation Commission, could not be reached for comment.